


You Long to Be Imprisoned

by whambat



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Angst, Brainwashing, Gen, Mind Control, this fic is and will remain 100 percent sfw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-01-03 10:10:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21177698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whambat/pseuds/whambat
Summary: If he can force himself to focus, he's terrified by the lack of control, agonizes over the guilt of hurting his friends. But it gets easier and easier just to sink into the back seat of his own mind...An exploration of the brainwashing status effect if it had a few elements of actual brainwashing and conditioning.





	1. Exposure

The first time it happens, it's terrifying. The magic that the shadows wield is new to him, to all of them really. None of them understand why Joker is suddenly standing in rigid silence instead of ordering their next plan of attack. After a moment's hesitation, Panther cracks her whip at one of the succubi, sending it down.

"Hey Joker, you good?" Skull's words sound far away, muffled as if Joker's ears are underwater. He can't reply, can't move, can't even get his lips to twitch. His body won't listen to him. It's something separate from him now, the channels of communication blocked off between body and brain. He's trapped.

Skull gives him a worried look, but there's no time to waste while they're under attack. He turns his back on Joker and fires a shotgun round into one of the two remaining shadows. Just one left.

And suddenly he does move. Joker feels his body rush close, watches his knife slash against Skull's back, catching on fabric and flesh before glancing off the metal plating running down his spine. He hears a scream, but it sounds more distant than before.

Joker's body stills and he tries desperately to take back control. The fight outside fades out of focus as he strains to do anything at all. _ Attack the shadow. _ No luck. _ Drop the knife. _ His hand stays gripped tight on the handle. _ Blink. Breathe. _ The functions remain automatic despite conscious attention. He doesn't notice Mona taking aim at the shadow with his slingshot until he realizes he's stepped in close for another attack. _ Stop stop stop stop stop. _

"Mona, watch out!"

Things happen quickly. Mona fires on the shadow. Joker's knife swings down. The shadow is hit, and dissipates into darkness and nothing. The knife stops just above Mona's head.

Joker takes ragged breaths as the panic he felt finally starts pumping adrenaline through his system. Sights and sounds close the isolating distance all at once, and the world is overwhelming. He staggers back a few feet, drops the knife, grips his head in his hands. He sobs out an "I'm sorry" as his teammates crowd around him in concern.

When he gathers himself, he explains what happened as best he can. They decide to call it a day, leaving Kamoshida's palace visibly shaken.

-

They go in with a plan next time. The succubi were weak to gunfire, so they conserve bullets until they're absolutely necessary. The strategy works well, but they get careless and miss too many shots in a row. This time it hits Skull and Mona both. They become unresponsive, eyes vacant.

"We need to finish this quickly, but keep your guard up," Joker advises.

Panther nods and gives the shadow a crack with her whip, leaving a large welt on its skin. Mona mutters the spell for Dia, and his voice is monotone and dispassionate, air pushed through vocal cords past moving lips, but not speech. The shadow's injury vanishes almost as quickly as it appeared.

"Dammit," Joker steadies his hand and aims his pistol, determined not to miss this time. Skull takes the opening and bring his club down hard on Joker's shooting arm with an audible crack. Well, he thinks through the pain, at least they're even now. The battle turns to a stalemate. Their attacks connect, but Panther's attention is split between targeting the shadow and mitigating the damage Skull is doing. Every turn she has to heal is a turn where Mona brings the shadow back to full health as well. This is how they go out, isn't it? Why did they think they could do this?

Skull is readying for yet another swing when he shudders suddenly. The vacant look on his face is replaced with a wince of pain, fear, disgust. He stumbles back before sprinting headlong towards the shadow.

"Stay outta my head, asshole!" The club strikes true and the shadow goes flying, spewing darkness from the point of impact. It's over.

The four of them hobble to a safe room and use up the last reserves of their energy to heal. Wounds mend and bones reset and re-fuse. Mona and Panther are at their limit, but they can't afford the time it would take for the team to recuperate in the real world.

The team materializes on the school roof late in the evening. Ryuji and Morgana offer profuse apologies, and Ren wraps an arm around each of them. Ann follows suit, and they sit there, holding each other, reassuring.

-

Morgana calls it brainwashing, for lack of a better term. To Ren it feels less like mind control and more like possession, but the name sticks.

It keeps happening, but with less frequency as they move through Madarame and Kaneshiro's palaces. Mostly they're able to end the fight before the brainwashed party can do much damage. Every so often a light smack on the head is enough to snap someone out of it. Sometimes it wears off mid-battle like it did for Ryuji.

Sometimes Ren relives the sensations in dreams, only to wake up in bed still unable to move his own limbs, frozen on the edge of a nightmare. Unlike in the metaverse, here the adrenaline and fear reach his body, making his heart pound and forcing his breath out in shallow gasps. Sometimes it's enough to wake Morgana up, and he hops onto Ren's chest, providing enough sensation to pull him fully back to reality.

But he notices something in the moments where he's held hostage from his own body. Each time it happens, the dissociation kicks in sooner, layers of fuzziness and distortion wrapping around his senses in a stifling sort of comfort. If he can force himself to focus, he's terrified by the lack of control, agonizes over the guilt of hurting his friends. But it gets easier and easier just to sink into the back seat of his own mind, trusting that his friends will pull him out of it eventually. Each time he comes to again it's like ripping a bandaid off his consciousness. The world is suddenly _ here _ again, bright and loud and nauseating while he readjusts to the burden his own autonomy. Each forming thought stings in the moments just after he's freed.

-

Mr. Hiruta is the kind of teacher who goes on tangents frequently. Today's biology lesson was supposed to be over cerebral structure, but instead he veers off into brain chemistry, serotonin and dopamine, pleasure and reward-seeking behaviors.

"There are fields of Psychology dedicated to the way these behavioral patterns can shape the human mind, especially when done intentionally. Certain kinds of conditioning associate a desired behavior with a reward, or positive reinforcement. For example, if you remember my lessons when finals roll around, you'll get a high score. Positive reinforcement. Failing to perform the desired behavior, or doing something undesired, can be associated with negative reinforcement or punishment. You don't remember what the hippocampus is, you don't get as many points on the test. Negative reinforcement. You instead try to cheat on the test, you get suspended or face potential expulsion. Punishment.

"These systems are in place all around our society, but there are of course ways they can be misused. Rewarding and reinforcing harmful ideas and behaviors, or punishing people into submission and acceptance... Depending on the setting and intent, these tactics can be considered manipulation and abuse. When done maliciously and systematically, this kind of conditioning is sometimes called-"

"Brainwashing."

"That's right, Amamiya! Though I'll thank you to wait until you're called on instead of interrupting my lecture." Hiruta straightens his cravat with a bemused smile. "Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, electrical signals and neurons…"

As Hiruta explains the workings of the human brain, Ren thinks again about his own mind, held far away from the battles around him. Sheltered in comfort so long as he gives up control, wracked with fear and panic and pain if he tries to resist. Reward and punishment etching a pattern into his psyche. Maybe Morgana was onto something with the name.


	2. Shaping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New teammates, a shopping trip, and something missing.

The year goes by, and they gain two more teammates. As Yusuke and Makoto get the hang of things, Ren notices something. They seem less affected by the shadows' manipulative spells than Ann, Ryuji and Morgana. It's hard to gauge–in all honesty the brainwashing really isn’t that frequent–but it seems lately like it takes a harder smack to snap the three of them out of it, and the lingering disorientation seems to last longer than it used to. He assumes it's the same for himself. It makes sense, Ren figures, that the founding phantom thieves would be the ones most affected. They've had the worst of it, the most prolonged exposure. The strongest reinforcement.

The slight worsening of these effects worries him, and from their shared glances when one of them recovers, Ren suspects his teammates feel the same way. But he doesn't say anything, scared that speaking the words will make his fears stronger, more true. He doesn't share that his awareness becomes more and more interior, focused on the warm, lethargic feeling that presses against his head from the inside out. He doesn't share that it gets harder for him to remember what happens at all in each instance where he loses control.

-

It's the end of the summer when he notices a new item at Untouchable. Shiny elastic headbands with strips of hard aluminum every few inches, and a small battery powered LED light at the front of each one. "Brain Guards," the tag says. Ren buys one for each of them.

"Interesting choice. Trying to keep the aliens from reading your mind?" Iwai teases.

"Something like that…" Ren smiles awkwardly.

Iwai laughs. "Well best of luck. But I hear it's the government you really gotta watch out for."

-

Yusuke and Makoto protest the headbands. They're hideous, conflicting with Yusuke's carefully curated aesthetic, and he's quite fond of the elegant ring that seems to help him evade fire. Makoto, ever the strategist, asserts that the headbands don't provide a meaningful tactical advantage; there are more frequently occurring risks and weaknesses they could be guarding against instead. Futaba snickers at how silly Ren looks. They don't get it.

But Ren can tell, or at least guess, that he's not alone in the mounting stress of being played like a puppet. Ann and Ryuji take theirs with no objections, just an appreciative nod. Morgana takes one and wears it like a collar. They aren't sure if it will work correctly if it's not around his head, but there's a peace of mind in knowing that they're at least  _ trying. _

At any rate, the headbands seem to work. He can rest easy.

-

And resting  _ is _ easy, as it turns out. When Ren isn’t getting lectured by Igor and the smurfettes, his dreams drift back to the same sensation. His brain drifting, detached, thoughts addled or nonexistent. There’s something he should be worried about, but it’s hard to remember, easier to let go. The dreams used to bother him, but he doesn’t wake up in petrified terror anymore. Instead he wakes calm and fully rested, having indulged in the easy haze of mindlessness without consequence.

It doesn't quite match the real thing. The undercurrent of dread is missing, and the pain, though he thinks–once he's lucid enough  _ to  _ think–that this may be attributed to his own lack of resistance. That realization scares him more than the sleep paralysis ever did.

-

Noir joins the team, and Joker hands over his brain guard without a second thought. It seems unlikely to come up in Okumura's palace, and Joker is willing to risk being trapped in his own head again if it means Noir never has to know what that feels like. He figures he can just buy another one after they finish up for the day.

He's wrong, it seems. Where the tacky headbands once sat in the far corner of Untouchable, Ren instead finds a display of plastic riot masks. Makoto could probably devise strategies for how they would help in battle, ways they could be a hinging point in the team's victory. Looking at them, Ren just feels defeated.

He composes himself and asks Iwai if there are any brain guards left, hoping the desperation doesn't show on his face. He's been told he's hard to read, and it seems to be the case this time. Iwai just shakes his head, saying he didn't see the point in restocking when it had taken months to go through the first order. He's marketing to airsoft hobbyists, not conspiracy theorists, after all.

Ren resigns himself to being vulnerable again. Tactically, it would make the most sense to take back the headband he gave Haru, since she's had the least exposure. But he can't bring himself to put her or any of his teammates at risk like that. It's his responsibility as a leader to watch out for them. He can shoulder this burden alone. Doing otherwise would just be cowardly, selfish.

-

The infiltration runs smoothly as the thieves take down shadows in the form of robotic underlings and mechanized middle management. A long elevator ride brings them out of the atmosphere, where their stealthy movements become floaty and imprecise. Their path ends at an airlock door, with no way forward but to open it.

The vacuum of space is breathtaking in more ways than one. It only takes a few seconds to be flung from one airlock to the next, but within that instant, it feels like eternity. The void holds a darkness so deep and vast that Joker feels he could drift in it forever, sinking down or floating up and away. The difference is only semantic in zero-gravity, he realizes.

A group of shadows meet them at the next airlock. Amid the flurry of battle, one of the shadows casts a spell, and suddenly the recycled space station air goes eerily still around them. Joker orders the team to target this one, but it lets loose another spell before they can take it out. It hits Joker with a flash of recognition, followed quickly by a familiar sinking feeling and then...

"-just say the word, Joker."

He blinks hard, adjusting to the brightly lit space around him. They're in a hangar now, or perhaps a launchpad of sorts. Weren’t they just in the airlocks?

“What word?”

“The calling card, dude! Stealin’ the treasure?” Skull cocks his head towards the center of the room. Sure enough, Joker can see the shimmering amorphous light of a treasure yet to materialize. How did they get here so quickly?

“Right, right.”

He trails behind the rest of the team as they backtrack through the palace, trying to commit the unfamiliar area to memory. It takes what feels like twenty minutes to reach the last place he remembers, but there's no telling how long the trip up had been. Oracle dictates a series of switches to push to navigate the airlocks, the solution to a convoluted puzzle since committed to memory.

When Ren finally gets home, he can't sleep. Rather, he won't let himself sleep, unwilling to lose another several hours to nothingness so soon. He strains to recall that missing time, to push his retraced steps a few feet further, but with no success. His memory glides seamlessly from the first airlock to the treasure in the launchpad, and trying to pry apart the gap between the two only yields vague conjecture. He could ask his teammates, but that meant admitting there was something wrong with him, shaking their faith in him, weakening the team as a whole.

No, he has to figure it out on his own. They still have a few days before their deadline. That will have to be enough time for him to sort his head out.

**Author's Note:**

> I thought it was significant that they called this effect "brainwashed" instead of "charmed" or "controlled" as in previous games. Given late-game themes, I think this choice was made very deliberately.  
I don't know when I'll update this again but I do have more planned eventually!


End file.
